Compiler Suggestions/Info

[Robert]

I'm not a Coder or programmer, i have very limited knowledge and experience in that avenue. i would however like to try running my own server. First, is this possible, ive had no problems following all steps up until the compiler stage, but Im having trouble finding a free compiler that I can easily translate your instructions into. Im a Windows XP user. If anyone has any suggestions or recomendations, it would be much appreciated. If suggesting a specific compiler, an address where to download and recieve troubleshooting information would be helpful, as well as a brief summary of what issues I may encounter trying to follow the Guide on this forum to setting up my servrer using said recomended compiler. Thanks in advance for all of your help. Also feel free to email any suggestions/links to me: rpt79@aol.com

-Rob :)

[mattmeck]

from what i understand from past posts asking the exact same question as you, Windows users have to pay $900 for the compiler but Linux users can get one for free.

[Robert]

Then I guess if you had actually answer/suggestion to my post. It would have been either I cannot do such in Windows without spending an exhorbatant amount of money, or to switch to a Linux OS? Neither of which are an acceptable solution.

Also, if many other users are asking the same exact questions, maybe a Sticky or FAQ would be warranted, I don't have the time to read every post on every forum and the ones that I saw that seemed to have a topic matching my inquiry either had too little information, or were in fact not what i was looking for. A more
useful post would have a link directly to a forum page or reply etc.

Thanks anyway for trying.

[Trumpcard]

There just aren't alot of free compilers for windows out there, theres nothing we can do about that. I know some attempts have been made with djgpp and dev-cpp, but they have all failed. The guide right off of www.everquestserver.com explicitly states you need a compiler, and was written for VS.net (as stated in the guide) , the compiler used by the development team (also VS 6 will work). I'm not sure how much more we can do other than to put flashing H1 letters across the top of the page.

We can only support a limited number of compilers, VS for microsoft and gcc for linux is it.

I would recommend you wait for the binary release, there is one happening very soon. Compiling development code and building the servers from the code up is really intended for people who want to be involved in the development process, not ones that want to just run a server... It requires tools and skills that most general windows users just dont have. Not trying to sound elistest about it, but the point in us releasing development code is for knowledgable programmers to work with us on fixes to the code and what not, and hence it is considered unsupported.

[Robert]

Now that was a constructive post :) Exactly the information I was looking for... not the answer i would have liked, but it leaves me not searching or wondering. And I do understand your intentions releasing server info. is there a forum or link on this site that has your mission-statement or whatnot? Sinse you obviously have a very real reason for running servers and are serious about it... What is that reason? i would be interesting in hearing it. Also, I would love to get into coding/programming/debugging if given the opportunity, I consider myself fairly apt to learning and understanding computer related issues, more than the average user I would suppose, and I do have a back up box i may even try installing and running Linux on. my problem is time constraints, between work, Social life and EQ, I have very little time for much else, and I take it up with eating, sleeping and a number of other hobbies. So, either I sacrifice time and go looking for information on how to set a server up and read exhorbatant amounts of coding information. Or I sacrifice Forum time and post what i am looking for and ask if anyone knows of a quick and easy way for someone without much time to get into it.

So, other than to thank you for the thorough response, this post is to inquire the quickest and easiest way (or link) to get myself setting up a linux based EQEmu server on an alternate computer. Any sufggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.

[Trumpcard]

Linux, IMHO, is the best way to go. Not only do you learn Unix/Linux while playing with it, you have access to tons of free tools,compilers and programs. Its not the easiest thing in the world, but I believe the experience in itself is very rewarding for someone wanting to learn more.

Why do we run servers? Why does anyone do a hobby, we enjoy doing it. Some of us enjoy coding, the challenge of making things work, creating game worlds, a million reasons each unique to the indivudual.

As far as having time, I have a family, full time career, a million hobbies, but I find that you learn to make time for the things that are important to you. EQ was the worst time sink I ever got involved with and once I stopped playing it I had a ton more time.... A quick and easy way to get involved? I can't say there is one, anything requires time and energy....

[kai_shadowbane]

worst case scenerio, you could try a virtual machine with linux, which I have done to learn some of the linux os commands, which I am still not very familiar with, or you could try a dual boot system, which would be feasible but still a semi-pain to do.

[Eglin]

Has anyone tried a recent version of cygwin? I can't think of too many things that compile on Linux and not on cygwin under NT/2000/XP. I know for a fact that mysql and zlib can compile under it, and don't see any reason that eqemu wouldn't. Not to mention the fact that it would leave you with a bright shiny bash prompt (and cvs and ssh and perl and python and ...).

[Aaburog]

I beg to differ, trump. There are tons of free compilers out there for windows. I know linux. I had a linux server till the mboard died. But still I know the innerds of the bloated windows nightmare a great deal better ;)

You mentioned two very good free compilers that are pertinent to this topic. Dev-cpp can do everything cl.exe can.

You know what would help, devs? Would you mind taking some time to just dump out a dev-cpp compatible makefile? The rest I'd do. I'm a programmer by trade. And using cmake? or some similer tool, or maybe the project export thingy in vs.net could do the job. The makefile. that comes in the cvs release is just a linux-compatible type makefile, if I read it rightly. My point is, yes you guys do this for free, on your own time, and have other priorities. But then again, you're *good* at what you do and doing a makefile that'd work for the rest of the world wouldn't take much time to do. Minutes, probably. You don't have to test the thing. And of course leave it unsupported since you need to stay on the best beast that keeps you so productive (vs.net).

On a side note, I'd be willing to throw in coding ideas, snippets of optimized what-not, once I got started and got familiar with your code. Currently, I haven't bothered to get that involved because I spent several hours spinning my wheels trying to make sense of the vs.net project file wierdness. I know assembler fairly well, btw, and I imagine I could speed up a few funcs here and there. I just don't know vs.net's environment at all, and know .net only to an intermediate level.

Anywhoo, a non-vs.net makefile would help kickstart a lot of folks - either to doing their own servers properly, or to get a working beast and then start offering ideas to improve the code, the db, whatever.

Good job, keep it up, cya around...

[Trumpcard]

There may be tons of free compilers, but how many decent, supported ones are there?

I dont use vs.net myself, im on vs6 on windows so im not aware of any generic makefile exporting capability..

LE, Image, etc?

One of you guys have any idea what he's referring to ?

As far as inline assembly goes.. From a performance perspective assembly is awesome, we did that in our crc32 calcs, I use to do the same thing in c long ago. Problem for this project is that there just arent many programmers that know assembly anymore so its hard to support.

Want to do a quick and simple assembly routine to help speed things up? the DIST calculations in Mob:: . Those things get called ALOT and as a result, end up at the top of the performance stack during combat. I did some performance profiling on combat and noticed that DIST gets called way too many times, and the CPU speeds alot of time on that calculation.

You have to be very careful about writing assembly code for the emulator though. Remember, we're cross platform, so it needs to be compatible with both Intel and AT&T syntax since gas/gcc uses one and VS uses the other.

[Lurker_005]

The cheepest way to get VC++6 that I know of is to get a C++ programing book that includes a "starter edition" $50-80 range, possibly less. I used one of those when first getting into EQEmu and it worked fine, the only real limitation was it pops up a window each time you start an aplication that was compiled by the starter edition.

[Aaburog]

Thanks Trump. I'll delve into that routine and see if there's anything I can do to help. I've never done cross-platform assembly though, so I'm still going to split my time between that asm idea and getting a functional test platform.

We'll see...

[Trumpcard]

The way it worked last time was that quagmire did the VS one, and I did the linux one. I'll try to help convert anything you come up with over to gas syntax.